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Book 2 SOON .3, and Book 4. Soon 3
Book 2. SOON .3,
As I said, I’m trying to stay focused on “SOON”. And as I further said, the first time I saw the RITZ Theater (where SOON would open in January of 1971) was from my room at the Forrest Hotel.
At that time I had a south-facing room on the ninth floor; I was gazing out and noticed this odd, curiously configured roof top down below. Over time I realized that it was what a theater roof looks like from above. Years later, I would gaze at the same roof from below. Reaching across time to reconnect with the me that was, once upon a then.
I certainly felt much more at ease and at home looking out the window in (or from) what the Daily News, (in recounting the details of the murder most foul of a Barnum and Bailey circus clown), described as a “cheap west side hotel”.
In reality the Forrest Hotel was straight out of Damon Runyun, because Damon Runyun lived there and wrote there for many years. This or that reality is of course the past perfect invitation to investigate (if only for a moment) the question of relative reality, or the relative question of what (rather, which) reality is the real real deal. Dig? Capeche? Were we living in a world of Rock and Roll, or Guys and Dolls the reality show?
The truth is both and.. thirty or countless more other parallel realities all scrunched into one.
To be continued …
Book 4. Soon 3
I am riding on a train up over and through the Allegany Mountains on my way back to the Middletown collective (MAAC) from Johnstown, PA. Where I met the young impresario who intends to stage a concert production of SOON this coming 17th, 18th, and 19th of November. I’ve spent the last two days and nights thoroughly enjoying my self with he and his family. An all American mix of Mexican/Hungarian salt of the earth folks of the first order. I like him and them (Johnstown) very much and so we will proceed with the show.
As I referenced earlier in the Memwa? The possibility, likelihood and indeed chronic evidentiary factorama of yours truly having FAE (Fetal Alcohol Effects) is quite good, almost guaranteed.
The dear Mudder dear is no longer here to ask about her consumption of Ethel in the nine long months starting with December 1944 and ending with me birthday on the 26th of August 1945, but based on what I know as a “once upon a moment” UCLA trained “little time big time” drug and Alcoholism wazam, the referenced likelihood is almost inescapable, and more to the point the symptoms (and their side-effects across the life areas) appear to be ever-present.
If I ever get around to publishing my book “The New Paradigm for Alcoholism Addiction and Recovery” you will see what I’m talking about.
However, if you are too wise to wait, and know it may be best look FAE up now, then you will know that I don’t do too well with working on more than one thing at a time, and right now I’m working on many more than one thing at a time and it appears that I will be for the foreseeable future. The question for anyone would be “how to do it”; the question for me is HUH?
Apparently folks with FAE are blessed (well perhaps blessed isn’t exactly the right word, but you know what I mean) with the ability to go really really deep on a subject, but have extreme difficulty “changing sets” or, trying to move, pull ourselves out of, or shift our attention, from one subject to another.
For example, that is why, when I am concentrating on anything (like writing a song.. words OR music), I long ago learned that it is better, far better, if I do not try to cross the street, or be married etc.
I do love going deep beyond deep, but good Godawmighty it would be nice to be able to move comfortably and effectively from one thing to the next. Or just effectively.
That is why my Memwa? posts have begun to slow down as our gigging has picked up.
Interesting gigs every one, for example, Yesterday, July 30th was National Dance Day. A concept promoted by the great tv dance show “So You Think You Can Dance” along with producer Nigel Lithgow, and the great Congress Woman Eleanor Norton Holmes. We did an event, a National Dance Day Dance Party at a sky scraper housing development for seniors and the disabled (HOY Towers) in “Steelton” an honest to God, Steel Mill town (fallen on hard times like many another) in rusty post industrial Central Pennsylvania. We and they had the greatest time.
Here’s our recording of the theme of the day “Shake A Bum” and a photo of the good folks dancing.

National Dance Day! 2011 Steelton PA. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
However in addition to steady gigging, The SOON production and the Memwa? We have a Television show in development, two upcoming albums and “The Virgin Islands Songs” making its way towards a stage production inSt. Thomas.
This is not me complaining, it’s just that I am like a cross-eyed juggler.
We are busy and I am grateful. I just wish that I were capable of being more effective, as many too many things not mentioned, like the record company and music publishing, distribution and promotion and editing video and so on and on are not getting done in a timely manner.
I’m grateful a thousand times over for the grace and the real blessings that I have been given, the gift and the gifts.
I just wish that I could manage it, and them all, better.
Book 1.MORE The Blessed Virgins. and Book 4. LIVE Continued
Book 1.MORE The Blessed Virgins. and Book 4. LIVE Continued
The time between 1958 (when we returned to the Islands) and 1964 when I sailed away to “fame and fortune” in the music business was very eventful or full of “stuff” some of which I have already touched on in earlier entrys,(see 11 through 16) but much of which remains to be seen or said, writ and read.
We were young teenagers straddling multiple (many multiple) worlds, and because pool is undeniably the perfect allegory for life (in some quarkatronic parallel dimension), you will comprende when I say, it seems like one day everything is racked up tight n’ right and the next your worlds are rocketing away in the slam crack! echo-math of a resoundingly good breaksplosion.
Further with the poolagory,after rocketing apart, by God they hit the bumpers and come ricocheting back towards one another (or not) often colliding to make even more mayhem, and so and so on until finally all is calm and quiet again except that everything is where it wasn’t before and what wasn’t before now is, and on top of that there is a fair possibility that one or more balls (worlds) are gone and of course, no sooner do you adjust to that, when slam bang crackola mam, everything changes again.On second thought, Maybe war is a better allegory, but what would we call it? Warality, or perhaps reality?
Anyway, I am very relieved to have finally discovered or received, resisted, and finally accepted that change is the only real constant (now don’t think that I think that I’m making a statement of ultimate wisdom,e fact or universal truth ‘cause I know as well as the next psychedelic casuality that things ain’t always what they seem, and even ultimate truths are subject to their context or the shifting physics of sub atomic worlds and quantum dimensionality,( man it’s like one has to be a Zen master Psycho Scientist to step out of the door and hold your ever-changing own with the question of “what the heck’s goin’ on?’) anyway, I didn’t know this stuff then and so I often hoped, hoped with all my heart that nothing would ever change, that every thing would stay just the way it is this minute this hour this day forever…
Those were the times of course in which the world was as sweet and slow as golden honey (ah yes…against the blue blue of the countless shades of blue sea)
Rather than the times of violent chaotic change, or the happy/tragic occasion of a friends family (like the family of the The Girl With the Golden Skin) moving away from our “low cost housing community” to their own beautiful new home on a hill with the Million dollar views and the cool Island breeze…)
There were many golden days of the greatest camaraderie Cont…
PS Here’s a whimsical little piece on perhaps a Quantumized here after..
“Dead As Dust”. .
(Dust To Dust I’ve heard them say but..)
I’ve been told someday wemust
all wake up dead as dust
dead as dust.. what could that mean?
organic stuff with rocks between?
Have you ever looked at dust?
It’s alive!!! (except for rust)
A universe of universes there,
(between the bread crumbs and the doggie-hair)
and the mites (lil bugs big as elephants
with faces like mosquitos eating peppermints)
but if the dusts a little wet,
that doubles the universes that you’ll get
Great googamooga could it be
that that is what becomes of me?
We (I’ll) turn into the space between
the color blue and the color green
and fly in thirty different directions
all at once in thirty sections?
Oh I hope and pray there’ll be
some of me left of me
so I can dig this dance electric
from my dusty new prospectric
I wouldn’t miss the streets of gold
patrolled by strict prophets of old
declaiming ‘bout the days of Heaven
like nutty buckets outside a seven eleven.
I’d rather be singing with my dead dust band,
with my new name “dead as dust dude man”
everything that is, I’ll be..
part of it… all part of me
Great googa mooga I mean, really?
part of it… all part of me?
going up while going down
left and right and round and round
out in the country, while in town?
In silence AND rip-roaring sound?
Dead as dust might be exciting
(though the dyings not so inviting)
Although some folks go from here to there
rocking in their rocking chair,
Other people wake up dead
Intheir jammies in theirbed
I guess dead as dusts a kind of blender
that takes our mollycules and sends..er
friends them every wich-a-way
from Sapphire beach to Botney bay.
Me in the sea me in the air
me in all things everywhere
instead of like a dull vacation,
life’s (er..deaths) an exclamation!
Wow! wow! did you see that?
I’m a doggie AND a cat
I’m seeing through my ears AND eyes,
Hey!, Wot th heck? time really flies!
Dead as dust don’t sound so bad,
not the worst trip I’ve ever had
but for now if you don’t mind,
I think I’d rather stay behind…….
I think I’d rather live some more
and dance around the ballroom floor
but with every little mote alive
I give my word that I will strive
to live much more considerately
of every little dust ball that I see
Book 4. “LIVE” Continues
I have decided that I would like to have some Background singers on the “Shake A Bum” album, so I have found two good candidates ladyfairs, and we will do our first recording session this Thursday at 10 AM.
It happens that female background singers are just about my favorite musical instrument of all time, I simply love them, and everything about them..and perhaps most of all, their attitude. Yes yes I know, sounds mighty fishy but, they are an instrument with attitude, attitude that can, that must be able to shift and change at the drop of a hat or chord and change with absolute confidence. They are an instrument that is aware of it’s own iridescent beauty. A thing transformed, from the very first breath, the reality in and all around them changes to something extraordinary and grand.
Something extraordinary grande and wonderful like a full concert grand.
They are sublime..so, I may have let slip that I am fond of back ground chicks, having said all that I do hope the chicks can sing.
I’ve listened carefully, I think they can, but we shall see. You just never know until we are all singing together. Then it becomes like a game of give and take of musical tag a vocal dance of mutual inspiration and communication. I wish everyone could know the joy of creating a joyful groove and singing your heart out. When you are through you are often depleted in quite a physically and psychologically healthy way. If they can sing we will finish this album as quickly as possible and get out on the road to promote the heck out of it. It’s goint to be a great release literally and figuratively and I will be hoping to see folks I’ve been missing all over the world. For example, did you know that I have a serious coterie of fans in Prague Czechoslovakia? From as far back as South Atlantic Blues,along with a following in Asia? And Scandinavia? I can’t wait and the band is raring to go.. we shall see.